Tigger1 Loc: Surrey, BC Canada

My son gave me a Scenic Rush (www.scenicrush.com) ticket to drive four exotic cars as a birthday gift. I will let the picture tell the story. I got to select four out of the five cars shown in the picture.

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lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Nice experience! Which car did you like best?

I just had a BD too, 8-26. Shame I never learned how to drive a Stick-Shift (Standard Trans). I guess I'd have to settle for the Corvette (C7) Z06. Too bad you get not get to try a Ford GT as well.

Tigger1 Loc: Surrey, BC Canada

Each car has its own personality, but if I had to choose just one it would be the Ferrari and beleive me that Ferrari "red" is a real attention grabber! As to your comment about driving a stick shift, all five cars in the picture had automatic transmissions with "manual mode" override that is shifted using the paddle shifters. There is no clutch pedal in any of the cars. I was told that the dual clutch high performance cars all are equipped this way as the electronics in the transmission can up/down shift way faster than a human can operate a conventional manual shift transmission. The principal benefit of this technology, so I am told is that there is virtually no drop in RPM each time a shift is made and hence there is almost a continuous power feed to the driven wheels.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

OK, Great to hear I can drive a Sports Car! I guess I have not kept up with the technology beyond the engine itself. My 2006 Mazda 6i has Paddle shifters but I virtually always just leave it in regular 5-speed Automatic. I really have not gotten the hang of "manually" paddle shifting except to wait gas with excessive or inappropriate RPMs. Slow mountain driving is pretty obvious to figure out for paddle shifting. Yes, a Red Farrari sound cool, but most red cars are attention grabbers.

Tigger1 Loc: Surrey, BC Canada

There is absolutely no doubt you could drive any or all of these cars! Without the clutch pedal, you just trigger the appropriate paddle shift lever to choose the next gear required, either upshift or downshift. Depending on the amount of accelerator pressure you are applying at the time of activating a shift via the paddle shift levers, the transmission will chose the most appropriate gear to keep the car in the "power band" best suited for the load at hand. I am told these transmissions are far more sophisticated than those found in every day street cars that most of us drive. All of the four I drove even prevented you from holding the transmission in any one of the eight gears (nine for the Ferrari and Lambourghini) for longer than 30 seconds regardless of accelerator pressure and would automatically change gears to the next appropriate gear based on vehicle load, rpm, or throttle pressure. The cars could almost think for themselves unless you switched the transmissions to full manual mode. Then all automatic functions were swithed off. No more ABS, no more automatic transmission functions, no more anti-slip/anti-wheel spin control, no electronic safety control functions of any kind. You now are required to know exactly the limits of the car in any forward motion situation, from how much acceleration in a straight line or curve could be applied before tire breakaway would occur, or how much tire adhesion was available to you in cornering or braking maneuvers. Any miss application of accelerator or brakes could easily send the car into a 180 degree or 360 degree spin-out. This setting on the transmission, referred to as "corso" on the two Italian cars and "race" on the Nissan and Corvette were for track racing use only. "Scenic Rush" had wisely disconnected this switch on all four cars so that inexperienced (meaning non-professional or race trained) drivers could not get themselves into trouble. All four cars were equipped with Toyo street legal race track quality tires that are mounted with a fixture system to the wheel that prevents the tire from breaking its seal with the wheel under maximum torque. The Nissan reportedly can generate more than 1 G of force in a 360 degree turn at full power, sufficient force to literally tear the tires off the wheels if they were not mechanically locked together with what amounts to a series of bolts that pass through the rim of the wheel into the rim of the tire where the two make contact with each other. At our local drag strip, I have spoken to drivers about how they keep the tires on their dragsters from tearing the tires off the wheels under maximum acceleration and have been told they use wheel/tire locking bolts. I was unaware that the same technology was being used on street cars too.
If you ever get to come to Vancouver, BC, Canada and want to experience the "Rush" send me a PM and I can arrange a tour for you. However, I am certain there must be a comparable company in the LA area providing the same experience. Although, considering the hugh population difference between the LA area and the Vancouver area, I would assume your roads would be much more congested than ours so that would temper the "rush" side of the experience, but that is just a guess on my part based on my motoring experiences in your state some years ago.
Best regards, Garth

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

COOL!